Alaric I

Alaric I (359-410) was King of the Visigoths from 395 to 410, succeeding Athanaric and preceding Ataulf. A powerful Gothic leader who often switched between being an ally or enemy of the Western Roman and Eastern Roman empires, he was best known for his sack of Rome in 410 AD.

Biography
Alaric was born into a family of Goths, and he served as a foederati soldier of the Roman Army under Gainas before becoming a Gothic ruler. His Goths invaded Thrace in 391, but his forces were halted by the half-Vandal Western Roman general Stilicho. In 394, he led 20,000 Visigoths in support of Emperor Theodosius I against the Frankish usurper Arbogast at the Battle of the Frigidus. Despite losing 10,000 of his men in the battle, he received little recognition from the emperor, and he left the army and became King of the Visigoths in 395. He marched on Constantinople until he was diverted by the Roman forces, and he proceeded to invade Greece and sack Piraeus before destroying Corinth, Megara, Argos, and Sparta. However, the Eastern Roman emperor Arcadius appointed him by making him magister militum in Illyricum. In 401, he invaded Italy, but he was defeated by Stilicho at the Battle of Pollentia on 6 April 402 and then at Verona, although the Roman Senate was forced to pay a large subsidy to pacify the Visigoths. In 408, Emperor Honorius had Stilicho executed after it was rumored that Stilicho plotted to assist Alaric with taking over the Western Empire, and Honorius incited the Romans to massacre the tens of thousands of wives and children of the Gothic foederati soldiers, convincing them to defect to Alaric's army. Alaric's 30,000-strong army then marched on Rome to avenge their murdered families, and Alaric sacked Aquileia and Cremona and ravaged the lands along the Adriatic Sea before laying siege to Rome in 408. He forced the Senate to liberate all 40,000 Gothic slaves in Rome, but Honorius refused to name Alaric commander of the Roman Army, so the Visigoths returned to besieging Rome in 409. Alaric named Priscus Attalus the new Western Roman Emperor, but Attalus refused to allow for Alaric to send an army to North Africa, and Alaric deposed Attalus in 410 and besieged Rome for the third time. The city fell on 24 August, and Alaric's forces sacked the city for three days. The Visigoths treated the inhabitants humanely and burned only a few buildings, and Alaric abandoned plans to conquer Sicily and North Africa after the destruction of his fleet in a storm. He died in Cosenza, Calabria as his army marched northward from southern Italy.